'What's past is prologue'
-- The Tempest, Act II, scene i

Early in the morning, late in the century, Cricklewood Broadway. At 06.27 hours on 1 January 1975, Alfred Archibald Jones was dressed in corduroy and sat in a fume-filled Cavalier Musketeer Estate face down on the steering wheel, hoping the judgment would not be too heavy upon him.

He watched it leap off the end and disappear through an air vent. Go on my son! thought Archie.